


Tonight There's Gonna be a Jailbreak

by Rosbridge



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: New Republic Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Expanded Universe - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 16:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4631922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosbridge/pseuds/Rosbridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mara observes disparate cultural traditions on the night before her wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tonight There's Gonna be a Jailbreak

**Author's Note:**

> For #5
> 
> Not compliant with "The Wedding of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade"

Mara paced, the walls of her small cell seeming to shrink in on her as she moved. She had been captured before. She had been trained to resist all kinds of interrogation, fight mind probes and torture alike, but this was different. Her mission was of an unusual and time sensitive nature, and could not be performed satisfactorily in the wake of murdering her guards, who were probably decent people doing their best. She clenched her fists, then turned as her companion began speaking.

“They'll run a retina scan soon, Mara. We'll be out of here before Luke has a chance to miss you."

Leia Organa Solo, last Princess of House Organa, Chief of State to the New Republic and Jedi Master of the New Order sat on a bench in the corner of the cell. Her hand was pressed to her head wound, still bleeding sluggishly. Her hair had been half pulled out of its relatively simple twist and huge swaths of her face had been smeared with drying blood. She didn't look much like the somber Chief of State who had served the New Republic for years, nor the fierce Jedi who sometimes appeared by her brother's side. That was a significant part of their problem. They'd lost their ident cards at some point in the melee that had gotten them arrested in the first place. Probably when the table flipped. The guards had laughed when Leia gave her name and signed her up for a psych eval, then rolled their eyes at Mara and signed her up for a mandatory retina scan when she gave hers.

The Twi'Lek sharing their cell—who at least had the decency to have been on their side of the fight, and competent at that—laughed. 

“Tonight? I wouldn't bet on it. This place has had a busted scanner for months now. They have to send the results fifteen levels up, and no one's doing that at this time of night. She paused, considering. "This time in the morning."

Mara paused in her pacing and leaned against the wall, crossing her arms. 

“Being identified only helps so much. Tomorrow is going to be enough of a circus as is. When word gets out that we were arrested…" 

She shook her head. Marriage. She still couldn't quite believe that she was going through with it, but she wanted to do it properly. She might not be particularly familiar with how normal people went about this sort of thing, but she was pretty sure that your fiancee being arrested the night before your wedding wasn't considered an auspicious beginning. She was willing to bet that Luke's Aunt Beru hadn't spent the night before her wedding behind bars. The Twi'Lek's lekku had perked up and she was watching them with interest. Great. Exactly what they needed.

Leia shrugged, taking on a little of her brother's calm. Mara was annoyed that she found it comforting.

“We didn't do anything wrong, Mara. We defended ourselves when attacked. That's perfectly reasonable.” The sharpness in her voice wasn't anything like Luke at all, but it was soothing in its own way. It was nice to know Leia wasn't entirely unaffected by their absurd misadventure. Leia stretched a little, showing off the gash on her forehead, then smiled encouragingly. The blood probably should have ruined the effect, but somehow she managed to pull it off. “The wedding's not until tomorrow afternoon. We have time to resolve this."

Mara scowled. 

“I promised him I'd meet him at daybreak,” she paused, feeling a little foolish about the sentiment. “That's how they do it on Tatooine."

Leia pursed her lips, looking pensive. 

"I didn't know that." Her presence in the force took on a distinctive edge that made Mara's skin prickle a little. Sometimes it was easy to forget about Leia's connection to Vader. Other times it was impossible to miss. Leia raised her chin, a resolute look in her eyes. “Right. You'll be there."

Mara spread her arms in frustration. She was cut off from her usual skillset. There was no way to escape, not with Leia beside her, and she couldn't leave her behind or ask her to break the laws of the Republic she served. 

“How?”

“We break out.”

Mara blinked. Apparently her future sister-in-law and the New Republic's current Head of State was considerably more flexible on that point than she'd assumed.

“They haven't come by for retina scans or fingerprints. Our ident cards were lost in the fight, and sweeper droids will have sent them halfway to the surface by now. I know you didn't let these pathetic excuses for cameras get a lock on you. No one knows who we are. If we leave, no one will ever know we were here” 

Mara deliberately tempered the hope growing inside of her and jerked her chin towards the Twi'Lek. 

“What about her? She's heard more than enough to make trouble.”

Leia shrugged. 

“What about her?” She turned to their roommate and raised her voice. “New plan! We're breaking out.”

The Twi'Lek woman snorted. Leia shrugged again. 

“Or you can stay here. Alert the guards and I will be very unhappy.” She smiled fiercely “You won't like that.”

Mara stared at her, trying to force herself to accept her unlooked for good fortune. Instead she found herself grabbing Leia's arm and hissing in a low tone of voice 

“Leia. Is that head wound worse than it looks? You are Chief of State. It's bad enough that you got caught up in a bar fight –"

“Heated exchange of perspectives in which I was unfortunately forced to defend myself and my family.”

Mara stubbornly ignored the warm curl in her stomach that description of their misadventure produced, pressing the point, “Bar fight. You're supposed to uphold the rule of law. If you get caught breaking out of jail, let alone threatening random jailbirds into going along with you the opposition will tear you to shreds. The media will be right behind them.”

Leia's mouth took on a familiar grim set Mara associated with staring down Imperial holdouts and her least favourite political rivals. 

“If my only brother wants to meet his intended at a stupid hour of the morning on his wedding day, then that's what's going to happen, Mara. The charges were absurd anyway. We were expressing ourselves, defending ourselves, and then we were... forcefully deescalating. We should never have been arrested to begin with. Besides,” she added, with a toss of her head, “I wasn't planning on getting caught.”

Mara privately thought that had she walked in on Leia climbing up on a bar to slam a bar stool over a Wookiee's head she might not have assumed Leia was deescalating anything, but Leia had a point. More importantly, she had given her word to Luke, and she didn't care to begin her marriage with broken promises. Still, it was stupid not to address the obvious flaw in her plan. She jerked a thumb towards the Twi'Lek. 

“What's to stop her from going to the press?”

“I can hear you, you know,” their roommate said dryly, “And even if the guard who stuck us in here has trouble telling humans apart, I don't. I know who you are, and for the record, your plan is deeply stupid, but I'm no snitch. No one would believe me anyway. I'm standing right here, watching this happen, and I don't believe me.”

She paused, looking thoughtful. “On the other hand, I saw how you moved in there. You've both got skills. Can you really break us out?”

Leia grinned. Mara was beginning to suspect she was enjoying herself. 

“Sure. I used to do this all the time.” Her expression turned serious. “No one hurts the guards.” There was a power behind it that Mara envied a little. Not a force suggestion, exactly, but a certainty. It was hard to say no to her. 

The Twi'Lek woman nodded, and Mara reached out in the Force, sensing her sincerity.

“I'm Leia,” Leia said, extending a hand. 

Mara snorted. “Mara.” 

The Twi'Lek woman smiled. “Artemis."

“Right,” Leia said. “The plan is simple. We smash the camera.”

“How?” asked Artemis.

Leia reached her arms over her head and stretched idly. “Leave that to us. Then we break out of the cell.”

Artemis twitched a lekku expressively. "Still stuck on how we do that."

Mara smiled grimly. She was pretty sure the police station had obligingly wide vents and she knew exactly what Leia had in mind. 

"Again, we've got it covered,” Mara said.

“Right,” Artemis said, sounding distinctly nonplussed. “Is there anything you do need me to do?”

Leia nodded. 

“We need to jam the door with the bench before the guards can get in, and then it's out through the vents. It's a heavy bench. We could use some help moving it.”

Artemis blinked at them. 

“I don't care what crazy powers you two have. I'm not jumping out of a vent onto oncoming traffic.”

Mara stared at her judgmentally while reaching through the Force, trying to unscrew the bolts holding the bench to the wall. Did she even want to break out of prison?

Leia smiled, and Mara felt her reach out in the Force alongside her, helping with her task. The weight of her mind against Mara's as they worked together was surprisingly nice. Strength and clarity flowed between them, and the bolts moved easily. 

“That shouldn't be necessary,” Leia said.

Mara stopped unscrewing and turned around to glare at her. 

“I'm not going to call Luke." She scowled, remembering that Leia had her own ways of contacting her brother. “You're not going to call Luke either.” 

It defeated the purpose of the exercise if he had to come rescue them before sunrise.

Leia just smiled more at the both of them and finished unbolting the bench. Mara's suspicion that she was enjoying herself intensified.

“This precinct has a walkway connecting it to an all-night shopping plaza,” Leia continued, sounding deeply satisfied as she jerked her head towards the camera meaningfully. Mara reached out in the Force with her and helped her yank some wires loose. Artemis made a startled noise as sparks flew from the camera, then shrugged and grabbed one end of the bench and started pulling. Mara and Leia joined in as Leia continued, “We make it over there and hail a cab before they've realized we're in the vents and get Mara back to her hotel before sunrise.” 

Working together, they got the bench pressed up against the wall.

Artemis made a satisfied noise. 

“This is getting to be fun. I've been looking forward to your wedding, you know. Couruscant daily says the holos are going to be spectacular.”

Mara grunted in irritation as she jumped up and grabbed hold of the grate covering the vent, but it held fast. She started swinging back and forth, trying to use the force to help pull it down.

“You don't seem like the type to be invested in other people's weddings”

Artemis eyed her contentedly. 

“I have hidden depths. Besides, the bookies are giving three to one odds that a brawl will break out between the two sides of the temple at the reception. The only thing I like as much as a good wedding is a good brawl."

Turning to Leia, she continued,“Speaking of hidden depths, how does a woman like you know where the vents in police station lead out to?”

Leia looked a little offended. 

“This isn't my first time being arrested. It isn't even my first time breaking out of this precinct.”

Mara looked down at her at her, amusement and irritation warring inside of her as she finally pulled the grating over the vent loose. 

“You! It was you!”

“What was her?” asked Artemis, flicking a bit of dusk off her shoulder.

“That breakout!” Mara said, “In '05, a small group of political dissidents were arrested after instigating a protest at an Empire Day parade. They escaped before they could be charged or questioned, and they were never captured.”

Leia nodded briskly, looking up at the vent critically.

“It was before I joined the rebellion. And in the words of our new friend, deeply stupid.” 

She leapt upwards, catching the sides of the vent and crawling inside.

Artemis looked impressed. 

“Huh. I knew there was a reason I voted for her.”

Mara rolled her eyes and got down on one knee. Artemis smiled at her. 

“That's very sweet, but I heard you're promised to someone else. I'm no homewrecker.”

“Unless you can jump up there yourself, hurry up and take my boost. The guards here are incompetent and overwhelmed, but they'll come to check on the camera eventually. And,” she added with a menacing flash of teeth, ignoring the unease within her that had nothing to do with their current predicament, “you're not the only one who's looking forward to my wedding.”

Artemis gracefully stepped on her hand. She jumped as Mara launched her, and Leia caught her on the other side without needing to be warned. She was a pretty good partner, Mara thought as she jumped up after them and pulled the grate back up with the Force, letting the satisfying click of the grate as it settled back into place distract her. A thought occurred to her.

“You didn't have training in the Force to help you then. How did you sabotage the cameras?”

“They turned off the cameras off themselves. They didn't want a record of what they were going to do to us."

“Convenient,” Mara said.

“That's one word for it.” Leia replied, sounding more than a little vindictive.

They let the conversation fade into companionable silence. The vents were narrow, dark, and dusty but crawling through them wasn't entirely unpleasant. Mara had spent her fair share of time crawling through air ducts both as the Emperor's Hand and as a smuggler. It was strangely comforting to know for sure that her new life would probably involve plenty of time spent crawling through them as well. Some things you didn't want to lose, she thought as she banged her elbow painfully against a wall.

“Here,” Leia said with preternatural certainty, shoving a grate down and tumbling through it. Artemis laughed and followed, and finally Mara tumbled out as well, blinking in the bright, harsh light of a maintenance corridor.

“Come on, hurry it up,” Leia said cheerfully as they joining the thronging mass of shoppers. “We just have to make it to the cab lane.” 

Easier said than done. Even in a crowd of disaffected Coruscanti hell bent on making the most of a late night shopping spree, Leia was drawing some stares. Mara hoped people were responding to the blood and not the woman. 

She put an arm around her as though she needed support and hissed, “Lean on me,” into her ear. Leia nodded and burrowed her face in Mara's shoulder, letting her support her.

“Excuse me,” Mara said to a passerby. “My sister isn't feeling very well. Could you give us directions to the nearest cab stand?” 

The man nodded sympathetically. 

“Sure. You're right on top of one. Just go three stories down.”

“Thanks,” Artemis responded, affecting a concerned tone. “Come on, let's get her home.”

It was going to work, Mara realised with a start as they reached the elevator, certainty swimming through her veins. She was going to make it back to the hotel. She was going to marry Luke without (further) scandal. She didn't quite know what to do with her mission so close to a successful end. Unease was building in her stomach again, the same unease that had led her to take Leia up on her offer of a few quick drinks, stand up for the honour of a local sports team she didn't know anything about and nearly get her head ripped off by a Wookiee.

They got to the cabs and managed to get in without the driver seeing Leia's face. She settled back into her seat as Leia sighed triumphantly and Artemis fist pumped. Mara stared at them blankly.

Leia turned towards Mara and smiled. 

“They don't make prisons like they used to.”

Mara snorted. 

“That was the easy part." She tapped her fingers on the edge of her seat unhappily. "Something could still go wrong.”

Leia stared at Mara with something like disbelief on her face. “Mara. Are you... nervous?”

“Of course I'm nervous,” Mara snapped, realizing the full truth of it as she spoke. “I'm marrying Luke. Which means marrying a Skywalker, becoming your sister-in-law, binding myself to your little club of former revolutionaries, and doing it in front of the whole kriffing galaxy, which is taking bets on whether a brawl will break out at my reception." She sighed, and rubbed her eyes. “I don't want to let him down, all right?” she muttered, feeling defensive. “I know I'm not exactly what most people look for in a sister-in-law. Or in a partner for the head of the new Jedi Order. But this is important to him, and I want to do it right.”

“Oh” Leia said, sounding about as awkward as Mara felt. Ugh. Feelings were terrible. Talking about them was worse. “Mara, I hope I didn't make you feel unwelcome, at all.”

“You didn't.”

“That's why I came to see you, and invited you out. On Alderaan. It would have been my job.” She paused, and cleared her throat. She looked determined, but underneath her resolve Mara recognised the sadness that often appeared when the subject of Alderaan was raised coupled with something else. She was nervous too, Mara thought.

“Your job?”

“To welcome you to the family. It's an old tradition. As Luke's sister, I would have organized a party for you the night before the wedding. I didn't think you'd like that, but I thought maybe we could have a few drinks. Talk, relax, get to know each other a little more.” Mara stared out the window and then forced herself to look at Leia. Leia was a consummate politician and wasn't one to avoid awkward confrontations, but Mara was pretty sure she wanted to be staring out the window as well. “It didn't exactly work out the way I had planned.”

Mara felt deeply torn between the desire to escape the conversation by flinging herself out of the speeder and returning Leia's honesty. Luke wasn't the only one she wanted to do right by, she realized. And she was no coward.

"Thank you." Mara said. Leia smiled at her. On another person it could have been described as shy, but between the blood still covering her face and the surety in her bearing it didn't quite seem to apply. Still, there was a vulnerability there that was usually reserved for Luke, Han, and her children. Winter and Chewie. Her family, Mara realised.

Mara did her best to return the smile. “It was probably more fun than a party. It was nice to spend some time with you. I'm pretty sure we did get to know each other better. We should do it again sometime; maybe with less of a deadline and fewer threats to your career.”

“This is both touching and surreal,” Artemis said, breaking the moment in a way Mara was honestly grateful for. “You can drop me off wherever. It's been wild. And an honour.” 

Mara looked over at her and smiled again. “You were apparently part of my Alderaanian pre-wedding party. Want to come to the wedding? You'd fit right in on my side of the temple.”

Artemis blinked. “What. I mean yes, obviously.” She shook her head and smiled, a little bashful. “This has been a really weird night.”

Mara frowned thoughtfully “We'll have to come up with a cover story for how we met.”

Leia's smile broadened “I'm sure a modified version of the truth will work. Breaking out of prison is a very reliable way to make friends.” She turned to Artemis. “Come home with me and we'll work out the details.”

The cab pulled over to the roof of her hotel. She checked her watch. Five minutes to sunrise. She'd made it. Excitement started to build in her chest, displacing her lingering unease as she climbed out of the cab and wandered over to the edge of the building, keeping one eye on the stairwell.

This wasn't exactly how she had planned to meet Luke. She was covered in dust and wearing last night's torn and stained clothing, but she figured that if Luke could overlook the assassination attempts he could probably overlook a little dirt. And there he was, walking towards her, beaming in a way she could admit made her heart ache a little. She gave into a sentimental impulse and ran towards him, catching him in her arms.

“Hey,” he said softly. “I missed you. Thanks for meeting me here.”

Mara laughed and pulled him close and kissed him, suddenly sure that even if their wedding was destined to be a disaster, it would probably at least be a manageable disaster. They'd face it the same way they were apparently going to be facing the rest of their lives. Together. With backup that shared her appreciation for a discreet exit through oversized airducts.


End file.
